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NCT Number: NCT07647900

Photography-Based Intervention for Children With Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

The aims are to evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of the photography-based intervention in children with ADHD and to provide preliminary evidence of its effectiveness in alleviating emotion recognition, attention, and impulsivity in this population. Photo-taking is a common daily activity that significantly impacts people's lives. Given the effectiveness of photography in addressing social skills, communication, and emotional well-being, and its ease of use, a photography-based intervention is proposed as an adjunct tool to teach children with ADHD emotional recognition and improve their ADHD symptoms. To the best of my knowledge, no previous study has adopted photography to teach emotional recognition in children with ADHD. This photography-based intervention not only teaches children with ADHD photography skills but also improves their ability to recognize and express emotions. Appropriate emotional processing and expression may have a positive impact on these children's confidence and ability to develop and maintain positive relationships with their peers, leading to better overall well-being and social integration.

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This study is active but is not currently recruiting participants.

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Key information

Conditions

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity Attention Deficit and Disruptive Behavior Disorders Behavior Impulsive Behavior Mental Disorders Neurodevelopmental Disorders

Age range

8 year–12 year

Sex eligibility

All sexes

Study type

Interventional

Phase

Not applicable

Primary location

Ka Po Wong

Hong Kong

Who can participate

Healthy volunteers accepted: No

Only the study team can determine whether someone qualifies for participation.

Inclusion criteria

  • ethnic Chinese aged between 8-12 years old
  • documented diagnosis of ADHD by a psychiatrist according to the ICD-10 HKD or DSM-5 criteria
  • stable on current treatment for ADHD eight weeks before baseline
  • ability to read Chinese and listen to Cantonese
  • able to operate a camera; 8) willingness of
  • their guardians to provide informed consent

Exclusion criteria

  • general intellectual functioning below the low-average range (estimated IQ < 80)
  • unstable screened via parental declaration and medication review
  • comorbid psychiatric disorder, severe physical or learning disability that prevents functional participation in photography tasks

Treatment and study plan

Photography-based psychoedication

Behavioral

The programme follows a structured progression across six sessions, each building upon previous learning whilst introducing new skills and concepts. For the first session, participants build rapport and introduce photography techniques (composition, lighting) alongside emotional awareness to capture basic emotional states.

For the second and third sessions, they explore personal emotions and triggers through self-portraits and visual documentation. For the fourth and fifth sessions, they focus on the ADHD journey via strength-based photo narratives and collaborative projects to enhance peer support and social learning. In the last session, they consolidated skills into personal visual toolkits for ongoing regulation, concluding with a final project presentation and maintenance planning.

Primary outcomes

  1. Emotional Awareness

    Time frame: From enrollment to the end of treatment at 8 weeks and 3-month follow-up

    Participants' emotional functioning was evaluated by a licensed clinical psychologist using an adapted version of the Emotion Awareness Questionnaire (EAQ; Rieffe et al., 2007). To fit the clinical evaluation context and focus specifically on the core processing stages of emotion identification and expression, the questionnaire was adapted into an informant-report format consisting of two selected subscales (10 items in total): Verbal Sharing of Emotions (3 items) and Differentiating Emotions (7 items). Items in this adapted version were rated on a 4-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (never) to 4 (always).

Secondary outcomes

  1. Emotion Recognition

    Time frame: From enrollment to the end of treatment at 8 weeks and 3-month follow up

    Participants' ability to accurately identify emotional states from non-verbal cues was evaluated using a customized, 7-item Facial Emotion Recognition Task (FERT) based on the universal emotional categories established by Ekman and Friesen (1975). Children were presented with seven distinct facial-expression stimuli, each representing a specific emotion category: happiness, surprise, anger, contempt, disgust, fear, and sadness. The facial stimuli were presented on a computer screen by a licensed clinical psychologist. For each item, participants were instructed to identify or label the displayed emotion. The performance was scored based on overall accuracy (total correct answers out of 7), with higher scores indicating a better capacity for facial emotion recognition.

  2. Happiness

    Time frame: From enrollment to the end of treatment at 8 weeks and 3-month follow-up

    The 4-item Subjective Happiness Scale (SHS; Lyubomirsky & Lepper, 1999) was utilized to measure subjective happiness. Respondents rated items on a 7-point Likert scale ( 1 = strongly disagree 1=strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree 7=strongly agree).

  3. ADHD symptoms

    Time frame: From enrollment to the end of treatment at 8 weeks and 3-month follow up

    The teacher-rated Chinese version of the Swanson, Nolan, and Pelham, Version IV (SNAP-IV-18) 18-item scale (Swanson, 1992), which assesses inattention (9 items) and hyperactivity/ impulsivity (9 items). A 4-point Likert scale will be used, ranging from 0 (not at all) to 3 (very much).

Sponsors and collaborators

Lead sponsor

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Other

Registry information

Official study title

Photography-Based Intervention to Improve Emotion Wellbeing and Symptoms in Children With Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Important dates

Study start
2024
Primary completion
2025
Study completion
2026
First posted
Jun 15, 2026
Registry last updated
Jun 15, 2026

OpenTrials presents study information sourced from ClinicalTrials.gov. The official registry record should be consulted for the latest information.

View the official ClinicalTrials.gov record (opens in a new tab)

This listing is for discovery and informational purposes only. It is not medical advice, does not guarantee that a study is recruiting, and does not determine eligibility. Contact the study team and a qualified healthcare professional when considering participation.

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